AFRICA AND THE AFRICAN MINDSET - A Compilation RESOURCE MASTERTHREAD of Posts about Africa and the African diaspora that try to help explain the African Mindset and the reasons for the ways that many Africans engage with the World - read this if you want to understand AFRICA 🧵🌍

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1706448989493583881

Dysfunction in the Congo - from ‘Empire of Dust’

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1706448989493583881

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1706400899248050425

How Africans understand time

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1706400899248050425

Read 35 tweets

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

@kunley_drukpa

Dec 28, 2023

THE BEST MOVIES OF 2023

2023 was a big year in film. Studios began re-centring ‘fun’ and Big Directors released new films. Here are The New York Times’ Best Movies of 2023: Movies that entertained and awed, but that also pushed boundaries and championed social justice causes 🧵

Jordan Peele’s SILENCE

A Black Man moves into newly-built affordable housing in a quiet White Suburb. However, he starts to find the silence driving him insane - and soon discovers the Whites are aliens harvesting the energy of POC with the mind-destroying lack of constant noise

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY MET DAVID MET JESSICA MET GEORGE MET RUBY

First ever Polyamory RomCom which tells the “side-splitting” story of how six unlucky-in-love polyamorous 30-somethings meet, bond, overcome jealousy and inhibition and then finally come together in a loving Polycule

Read 16 tweets

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

@kunley_drukpa

Nov 30, 2023

https://twitter.com/newswire_us/status/1730039631431782877

Henry Kissinger is Finally Dead - Here Are His Top 10 Most Ghoulish Quotes:

1. Soviet Jews: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

2. Bombing Cambodia: “[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies or anything that moves.”

3. Bombing Vietnam: "It's wave after wave of planes. You see, they can't see the B-52 and they dropped a million pounds of bombs ... I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month ... each plane can carry about 10 times the load of World War II plane could carry."

4. Khmer Rouge: “How many people did (Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary) kill? Tens of thousands? You should tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in the way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.” (Nov. 26, 1975 meeting with Thai foreign minister)

5. Dan Ellsberg: “Because that son-of-a-bitch—First of all, I would expect—I know him well—I am sure he has some more information---I would bet that he has more information that he’s saving for the trial. Examples of American war crimes that triggered him into it…It’s the way he’d operate….Because he is a despicable bastard.” (Oval Office tape, July 27, 1971)

6. Robert McNamara: “Boohoo, boohoo … He’s still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty. ” (Pretending to cry, rubbing his eyes.)

7. Assassination: “It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.” (Statement at a National Security Council meeting, 1975)

8. Chile: “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

9. Illegality-Unconstitutionality: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.” (from March 10, 1975 meeting with Turkish foreign minister Melih Esenbel in Ankara, Turkey)

10. On His Own Character: “Americans like the cowboy … who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.” (November 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci)

https://twitter.com/newswire_us/status/1730039631431782877

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1712441794766528699

His last interview - and what a set of comments to go out on!

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1712441794766528699

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1730049922710319163

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1730049922710319163

Read 4 tweets

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

@kunley_drukpa

Nov 29, 2023

CROSSING AN AFRICAN BORDER - NAMIBIA TO ANGOLA 🇳🇦🇦🇴

Short Story from Travel Author Paul Theroux’s Book ‘LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE’ about travel in Africa and his impressions of the chaos at the Angolan Border as he crossed it:

“People milled around the stalled vehicles, shouting, selling food out of baskets - small bread rolls, fried cakes, cold drinks, wilted vegetables, and trays of chewing gum and candy. Beyond the crush of these vendors I could see another large crowd pressing toward an open shed with a high roof. Some of those people, mostly teenage boys, the Artful Dodgers that haunt frontiers, hurried toward us. In such circumstances, you sense being singled out and stalked like a lamed prey animal.

All of it because of the proximity to Angola, most of the goods sold to people who traveled across the border. I asked Stephen if this assumption was correct.

"They have nothing in Angola," he said. He thought again. "But they have money. "

The shop fronts and businesses became denser, closer together, as we approached the border town of Oshikango, but of course, being a frontier, it was only half a town, walled off from its other side by a high chainlink fence running at a right angle across the main street. Parked on that street, waiting to go through Namibian customs, was a long line of trucks, several cars, even some loaded pushcarts and wheelbarrows. They looked as though they had been sitting there for a year, and the scene was of great, almost riotous disorder.

"Be careful." Stephen said. "There are thieves here - and on the other side, many thieves. Don't get out of the car until I give you a signal. I will find someone to help you."

He slipped out of the car and was accosted by a group of boys. He made a circuit of the blocked-off street, returned to the car, and opened the door.

"Lock the door. Don't talk to these bovs. Don't look at them." ”

Then he was gone, hurrying through the mass of people pushing into the shed.

Outside the car (my door fastened by the coat hanger), the boys were pressed against the windows, some calling out, others pleading, "Mynheer! Mynheer!" Stephen returned with a girl of about nineteen or twenty, hardly more than five feet tall. She had a serious face set in a scowl, her jaw thrust out, and wore a blue blouse and a pink skirt, and on her head a floppy-brimmed knitted hat of white wool, like a picturesque peasant in a folktale or nursery rhyme.

"This is Vickie," Stephen said. "She will help you."

Seeing her, hearing this, the crowd of boys began to laugh, provoking Vickie to say something sharp to them, which shut them up.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Don't show any money," Stephen said. He palmed the payment - in gratitude for shepherding me, I had given him twice what he asked. He handed Vickie my canvas duffel.

She hoisted my bag onto her head and hung on to it with both hands. I clung to my briefcase. As we walked down the hot street and fought through the crowd to the customs shed, the boys snatched at my shirtsleeves. "Mynheer!"

Apart from the pestering boys - and more joined them as we went along - the formalities on the Namibian side were straightforward: presentation of signed forms and passport and the usual bag search, with the singular diversion of a Namibian customs inspector lifting my copy of Benito Cereno, squinting at it, then paging through it, his dancing eyes indicating that his head was a hive of subtlety, as if he were looking for an offensive passage.

"You can go." He directed me to the back of the shed, where a narrow walkway with high sides led into a maze.

The same boys followed, about ten of them. I knew their faces by now: the one in the soccer jersey, the one with the woolly Rasta hat, the one with the Emporio Armani T-shirt, the one with the wicked face and broken teeth, the one who kept bumping up against me - his plastic sandals were cracked and his feet were bumped and bruised; several boys had their hats turned backward in the gangbanger style. Customs and immigration did not apply to them, apparently; they pushed and jostled along the narrow passageway, which, I saw afterward, represented no man's land.

At the end of the passageway, Angola was another shed, with a wooden window flap propped open, more people in line, all of it enclosed by chainlink fences and razor wire.
Vickie, surrounded by the mocking boys, pointed to the window and indicated that I should hand in my passport. As I did so, I heard a howl.

"You!" It was a man inside the shed, in a blue uniform. "Get away!"

He meant that I should get in line, which I was happy to do, though I was startled by his snarling tone. I was to hear this same intentionally intimidating voice for the next few weeks, always by policemen or soldiers or petty officials.

The Angolan voice of authority is severe, often bitter, usually reproachful, sometimes cruel. When I commented on it or complained, people said, "They've had almost thirty years of war." The war has been over for more than a decade, I would say. "But they were fighting South African soldiers" was the rejoinder.

Actually, the South African soldiers had collaborated with one large Angolan faction. It was my belief that the hostility in all this bluster and obstruction usually meant that a bribe was being suggested.

The nastiness was always from an official, seldom from an Angolan civilian, yet the civilians had suffered too. I could not remember having been spoken to with such deliberate rudeness - not in Africa, not anywhere. But of course I was not in an international airport. I was a mere pedestrian in old clothes who had walked across the border from Namibia with old women carrying sacks of vegetables and baskets of chickens, old men shuffling behind them, and loud boys yelling to each other. Also, on that morning I was the only visible alien seeking to enter.

When my turn at the window came, the Angolan immigration official with the mean face and the abusive voice snatched at my passport and found my visa. But instead of stamping it, he put it aside.

"Where is your letter of invitation?"

No foreigner can enter Angola without a formal (and notarized) letter of invitation. I urge anyone in the United States who believes that we treat visitors bureaucratically and with suspicion to consider the obstacle course that Angola (and many other countries) presents to its foreign visitors: a seven-page application, a prepaid hotel reservation, a prepaid round-trip airline ticket, a set of character references, and an invitation letter from a resident of Angola stating exactly what the visitor will be doing in the country. Then you pay $200 for the visa. And you wait for several months. And you might be turned down, as I was, twice, before getting this visa.

"Why bother?" people asked me. But a country that is so hard to enter makes me curious to discover what is on the other side of the fence.

It so happened that I had the letter of invitation in my briefcase, which (in Portuguese) specified that I was in Angola to visit schools and colleges and give some lectures. I was a writer, it explained. All this tedious detail had the singular merit of being true.

Read 6 tweets

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

@kunley_drukpa

Nov 27, 2023

THIRD WORLD BRITAIN AESTHETICS THREAD - “Britain, 2100” 🧵

Britain, 2100

On The Streets

Read 19 tweets

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @kunley_drukpa

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!